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Love Stories: The Advocate reminds us of what Prop. 8 is really all about…

I’m going to the wedding reception of my friends Mark and Jeff in a few weeks. I’m so happy and excited for them and it is just inconceivable to me that just two weeks later, if Prop. 8 passes, they would no,longer be legally married.

It is wrong.

Whatever happens on election day, gay couples will still love each other, still make livews together, and still fight for equal rights. But it would be such a step backward for us – for everyone.

The Advocate has a very timely cover story on newstands now. They shine the spotlight on 14 recently-married same-sex couples (24 couples appear in the cover). Among them are Ron Buckmire and Dean Elzinga who have been together for 17 years and got married on Aug. 8.

Anne Stockwell writes:

Back in 1991 the Internet was only for geeks and grad students. Ron Buckmire, who was studying applied mathematics at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in upstate New York, was both. When Buckmire visited Los Angeles that year, his welcoming committee included Dean Elzinga, who was studying mathematical logic at the University of California, Los Angeles.

Back in 1991 the Internet was only for geeks and grad students. Ron Buckmire, who was studying applied mathematics at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in upstate New York, was both. When Buckmire visited Los Angeles that year, his welcoming committee included Dean Elzinga, who was studying mathematical logic at the University of California, Los Angeles.

“We were one of the initial Internet couples,” Buckmire says, remembering the long-distance calls and student airfares of their early romance. “We were just so comfortable together,” Elzinga says.

When Buckmire graduated in 1994, he moved west for good. Now the two share a home in the Los Angeles suburb of Montecito Heights. Buckmire heads the math department at Occidental College and pursues his other longtime passion — the battle for LGBT civil rights. (You can thank Buckmire for compiling one of the first online archives of LGBT information back in 1991.) These days he heads the Center for Health Justice as well as the Barbara Jordan/Bayard Rustin Coalition, serving gay people of color, and blogs on politics under his online alias, “the mad professah.”

To read the rest of this story and the other love stories, go to Advocate.com.